On Sun, 29 Sep 2019 at 11:01, Stephan Eggermont <step...@stack.nl> wrote:
> Christopher Fuhrman > <christopher.fuhr...@etsmtl.ca> wrote: > > On Thu, 26 Sep 2019 at 04:27, Tim Mackinnon > > <tim@testit.works> wrote: > >> Anyone have any thoughts or directions to explore? > > > My intuition says that most software projects don't last long enough to > > invest in a general solution to supporting workflows. > > So, is there a causal relationship? And in which direction? > Interesting question, for which I have no answer. At the risk of going off topic, here's more context for my "intuition": I'm talking about startups (or even companies such as Google who have many "beta" projects that will likely die because they're experiments). The goal is a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) first, because many projects (or features?) don't continue for reasons that are often not technical. So spending resources (especially time) on workflow frameworks to support change is possibly a waste until some other (bigger) risks are mitigated. It's a form of YAGNI. The MVP is usually a form of cowboy hacking (hard-coded workflow), and if the project makes it to the next round, the company will manage the technical debt if changes are needed. We as software architects/designers are put off by these kinds of things. Maybe this is the kind of scenario Tim describes in the first post? Technical debt due to brittle design could be a reason a project dies, but I think it's not really the common reason. I believe we as software engineers are biased, because software was less prevalent when the discipline of SE was created. It's still true today that it costs too much to maintain software that lasts a long time. But how many projects last long enough for it to be a problem? A related topic about traditional CS/SE curriculum not being adequate for the context of startups was discussed recently [1]. Cris [1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-institute/ieee-member-news/software-engineering-grads-lack-the-skills-startups-need > Stephan > > > > > > -- Christopher Fuhrman, P.Eng., PhD *Professeur au Département de génie logiciel et des technologies de l'informationÉTS (École de technologie supérieure)* http://profs.etsmtl.ca/cfuhrman +1 514 396 8638 *L'ÉTS est une constituante de l'Université du Québec*
